Electronic cabinets, enclosures, housings, compartments, and cells (hereinafter referred to as cabinets) often house heat producing equipment. A function of cabinets is to provide a controlled internal environment while simultaneously shielding and protecting the equipment housed therein from the external environment. Internal energy in the form of heat from the equipment can build up over time, resulting is excessively high internal cabinet temperatures, causing equipment reliability problems or equipment failure. The control of the internal temperatures in cabinets is referred to as "thermal management".
Thermal management strategies may often conflict with the requirement that a cabinet protect the equipment from the external environment. The application and performance of thermal management systems significantly affect a cabinet. Adverse effects of thermal management systems include costs, performance, power consumption, restrictions to equipment configuration, and limitations to the overall use of the cabinet. Typically, thermal management systems employ devices to manage heat within the cabinet. These devices have been deficient because of their size, cost, power consumption, poor performance, and poor integration into a cabinet.
Existing cabinet designs rely upon heat sinks, convoluted cross or counter flow air-to-air heat exchangers, vents to the external environment and electronically powered cooling devices. These and other thermal management devices and systems often require excessive amounts of external power to operate, have a high cost, low performance and impose limitations to equipment configuration. Thermal management devices are typically attached to a cabinet wall, ceiling, or floor and require that all internal air be mixed and circulated across the device and then returned to the cabinet system.
A need has thus arisen for a thermal management device and system for electronic component enclosures that achieve high performance, are easily integratable into a cabinet, are versatile for customization, provide low cost, low power consumption, and are easy to install, repair, and maintain.